


to fight aloud

by Damkianna



Category: Dark Matter (TV)
Genre: Alien Invasion, F/F, Gen, Hallucinations, Hints of Nyx Harper/Two | Portia Lin, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 07:45:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17039660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Damkianna/pseuds/Damkianna
Summary: Two is lost.It takes time for her to realize it. At first all she thinks is: it's dark in here. It's quiet. It's dark and quiet, and she walks and doesn't know where she's going.Doesn't know where she started. Doesn't know where she is.She shouldn't be here. Should she? There was—there was something important she was doing, something she needed to do. She'd been caught, hadn't she? She'd been caught, trapped, and she'd needed to get out.(Or: one way S4 could have started, if there had been one.)





	to fight aloud

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alamorn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alamorn/gifts).



> Your request for Two was everything I could possibly have hoped for, alamorn, and I just couldn't resist! I hope you like this, and that you've had a great Yuletide. ♥
> 
> Title from the poem "[To fight aloud is very brave—](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55871/to-fight-aloud-is-very-brave-138)" by Emily Dickinson.

 

 

Two is lost.

It takes time for her to realize it. At first all she thinks is: it's dark in here. It's quiet. It's dark and quiet, and she walks and doesn't know where she's going.

Doesn't know where she started. Doesn't know where she is.

She shouldn't be here. Should she? There was—there was something important she was doing, something she needed to do. She'd been caught, hadn't she? She'd been caught, trapped, and she'd needed to get out.

She needs to get out of here; she just doesn't know how.

She keeps walking. She hasn't struck anything, hasn't tripped or faltered, despite the dimness. Whatever's under her feet doesn't feel like anything in particular—and the moment she notices that, the moment she starts trying to think about it, it changes: metal, striated. Like the flooring that lines the corridors of the _Raza_.

The _Raza_. Two sucks in a startled breath—how could she have forgotten? But this isn't the _Raza_ , it can't be. Where is her ship? She has to get back to her ship.

She walks faster, with a sense of purpose; her feet are steadier under her. She feels like she's been asleep, drugged or—or just _gone_ somehow, and she's coming awake a bit at a time.

And then, off ahead of her, she sees something. A figure, waiting for her.

She doesn't know what to expect, and slows just a little. But there's nothing else nearby, and she won't go back the way she came. If someone is waiting for her in here, wherever this is, then she needs to know who.

She draws closer, and it isn't that there's light here, it isn't that it gets brighter; but the figure is—clarified, somehow, as she approaches it. Its outlines, its edges, become firmer, more solid, and by the time she's close enough to pick out individual features, she's already recognized the face.

She comes to a stop and bites her lip, hard, until she thinks she can say the name without her voice breaking. "Nyx."

Nyx tilts her head a little and smiles, and it's as lovely as Two remembers.

Probably precisely as lovely as Two remembers. The last time she saw Nyx, it was all in her head; and she isn't going to let herself start thinking otherwise this time. She isn't going to let herself get tricked into hoping for something impossible.

She couldn't bear it.

"You're not real," Two says.

"No," Nyx agrees. "But you wanted me here."

Two looks away. "I'm sure I did," she mutters.

"You associate me with things turning out better than you ever could have expected," Nyx says, not unkindly. "You were betrayed, you went to prison—and you met me there, and escaped." She shifts one shoulder in a little shrug; she's watching Two carefully, eyes dark, gaze warm. "It's sweet. I'd have liked it, I think, if I'd known about it when I was alive. Or," she amends, "you think maybe I would have liked it, at least, since after all I'm you, not me. But you already knew that."

"Yeah," Two agrees. "I did."

She stops short. There are things she—she almost wants to say, except it's so much. So much, and it feels so _stupid_ , telling it to herself like she doesn't already know; telling it to this figment of herself, because she's tired and afraid and alone, because right now there's no one else.

"It's all right," Nyx says. "You don't have to. I already know, too."

She pauses and looks at Two silently for a moment, and the care and concern in her face, the pinched, worried slant of her mouth—it's just Two's own imagination, she _knows_ that, but damned if it doesn't feel good anyway, to let herself pretend even for a second that she's being looked at that way by Nyx.

"It's been hard for you," Nyx adds at last, quietly. "All of this has been hard for you. The corporations, the war, the aliens—the synthetics, the androids. Meeting Dr. Shaw. Your daughter; _if_ she's real, _if_ Ryo was telling you the truth, if whatever is in those files from the lockbox can help you. There's so much, and it never seems to end. Every time you think you're starting to get it all figured out, something new comes along and overturns the board, and you're stuck chasing down the pieces all over again."

"Yeah," Two says. "It sucks," and Nyx flashes her a quick bright smile.

"See, that's one of the things I really appreciated about you," she murmurs. "Such a way with words."

Two has to bite her lip hard against the rush of—of she doesn't even know what, wistful bittersweet longing. Stupid, because this isn't even Nyx, just her own desperate brain making things up. It sounds to her like something Nyx might have said; but then of course it does, because otherwise she wouldn't be imagining Nyx saying it to her. You'd think knowing that would make a difference, but somehow it doesn't.

It's times like this she almost wishes she weren't just synthetic, weren't just constructed—that she were an actual android instead. Maybe then logic would be enough to make her stop _feeling_ things like this.

Nyx smiles at her again, smaller, softer, as if she knows what Two's thinking—except, of course, she does—and reaches out to touch the back of Two's hand. "There's something wrong," she says. "You know that."

"The last time I hallucinated you like this," Two agrees, "I was hypoxic. But this time—" She stops, disconcerted. "I don't know what happened. I don't—I don't remember."

"Try," Nyx says. "There must be some way to figure out what's going on. What were you doing? What's the last thing you _do_ remember?"

Two closes her eyes. Not that it matters, probably, if this is all in her head; but then if it helps her believe she's concentrating, maybe that's enough. "The shipyard," she hears herself say, because—because yes, that's right. The shipyard. Teku. Teku gave them Boone's coordinates, that's what it was, and they'd gone to the shipyard. They'd gone to the shipyard and tried to blow it up, and they probably should have known better than to touch another one of those damn white-hole devices.

And it hadn't worked, they'd been taken prisoner. She'd been separated from Three and Six, led away in another direction, and then—

She grimaces, rubbing at her forehead impatiently. And then _something_.

"Concentrate," Nyx murmurs. She's leaned in closer, now; Two's eyes are still closed, but it doesn't matter, she can feel Nyx's nearness—Nyx's free hand settling against her shoulder, a steady warm weight. "You've almost got it."

She'd been separated from Three and Six, led away in another direction. Into a room, smaller, screens and consoles everywhere. A woman, Two remembers suddenly, and she finds herself flinching from the memory, eyes snapping open—

And the woman is there, abruptly, right behind Nyx. Nyx, who's already turning to look, putting herself between the woman and Two.

The woman is exactly as Two remembers her, because of course she is. Scientist's uniform, Ferrous-issued, clean and neat. Dark hair, bound back, perfectly coiffed. And her eyes—

Her eyes are black, veined with seeping shadows.

"Pathetic," she murmurs, tilting her head. "Even now, our instrument, with our triumph at hand, she struggles to grasp what has been done to her. She doesn't realize there is no escape. She doesn't realize we have already prevailed."

"Like hell," Two snaps. "If you'd prevailed, you wouldn't need an _instrument_ anymore, and you'd have gotten the hell out of me already."

The woman doesn't reply. And then, in a flicker, it's not the woman standing there anymore, but Three. Three, with his eyes veined black.

"We'd expected this arrangement to be temporary," the thing wearing Three's face says—because it isn't him, doesn't even sound like him with a voice that cold and level. "She's an early model. Not very advanced."

It starts to walk. Not away, just around Two and Nyx, half a circle: appraising, eyeing them thoughtfully.

And then it doesn't look like Three anymore, but like Five. "But her nanites are late-stage. Rook wasn't intended to distribute them to—"

"He didn't," and Nyx says it instead of Two, but that's because Two's thinking it. "We stole them from him." She smiles at the alien coolly, eyes hard. "You can't control everything, and you don't control us."

Five's eyes narrow, and the alien says, "We do. In every way that matters." And then all at once it's become Four—Ryo—instead of Five. "Your choices are of no consequence; our dominion will be absolute, and we will destroy you. You've already done what was required to open the way to us. We are many, and we have brought ships, a fleet. You've already lost."

Two stares at it, and feels a sudden cold weight settle into the pit of her stomach. Because if she's wherever this is, unconscious or—or _held_ , one of the aliens inside her—what _has_ she done? What has it used her to do?

She swallows hard. And then tilts her chin up, and tells herself as much as she's telling it: "Whatever you've done, it won't matter. We'll find a way to change it, reverse it—or if we can't, then we'll make you pay for it, until you wish you'd never _touched_ us."

"Your resistance is unsurprising," it tells her. "The other was like this, too. But your weakness is too great. You can't overcome it; you never will.

"The delusions you subscribe to, in your attempts to impose some kind of artificial meaning upon your lives, upon a universe that is tearing itself apart with its own entropy—we don't need to fall prey to them to know how to use them against you." And in another one of those disorienting flickers, it changes again; it looks like Six, now. "These images, they belong to people you care about. To your crew. They would do anything for you—and this one did."

"You mean Six?" Two says sharply. "What happened? What did he do? What did you make him—"

"We didn't have to," the alien says, watching her with Six's even, steady stare. "He chose, as we knew he would. He opened the way. He is ours now, and we will take him, use him, consume him."

And maybe that should be unnerving to hear, but Two finds herself grinning instead, fierce, teeth bared. "So he's still alive, then," she says. "Good to know, thanks."

The alien doesn't look surprised or displeased; Two's not sure they even really understand how facial expressions work. But it falls silent for a moment, and the idea that she's managed to knock it off-balance even for a second is pretty damn satisfying.

"You can't hope to prevail," it says, and Two's about to spit something back, something to do with how she can hope any idiotic reckless unbelievable thing she damn well pleases, except then it—it shudders, Six's features sort of blurring out.

"Something's happening," Nyx says, and her hand tightens on Two's. "Two—"

And it should be a good thing; anything that makes the alien falter is a good thing. Maybe they've figured it out, maybe they know something's wrong with her—maybe they've shut her in a stasis unit, remembering what happened to Three, how that alien scrabbled its way out of him once it realized what they were doing.

Except if Two leaves this place, surfaces or wakes up or whatever the hell there is to do—

"You have to go," Nyx is saying, because of course she is; because Two's thinking it.

And because it's only herself she's talking to, maybe that's what makes it possible to admit it: "I don't want to."

Nyx looks at her, and her whole face softens—she really was beautiful, Two finds herself thinking, chest aching. Nyx was—she really was so beautiful.

"You have to," Nyx murmurs. "You know that." She pauses, and then twines her fingers between Two's, reaches up with her free hand and touches Two's cheek—and it's only Two's imagination, but it _feels_ so real. It feels wonderful. "You can see me like this whenever you want to. Just close your eyes," and Two does it, feels Nyx move closer, that sweet feather-light brush of Nyx's lips to hers—

Except it isn't real. It isn't real, and the crew is, and whatever Six did or was convinced to do, whatever foothold the aliens have, Two isn't going to leave them to face it alone.

She breaks away, but not far: just enough to lean her temple against Nyx's, their cheeks brushing. "I'm sorry," she says, against the corner of Nyx's mouth. "I'm sorry I wasn't fast enough to save you."

"It wasn't your fault," Nyx murmurs. "I wasn't fast enough to save myself. You _did_ save me, Two. You broke me out of prison, you gave me a ship and a crew—you gave me a home. Even after you knew what I was, what I could do, you never made me do it for you. You could have strapped me down in an infirmary bed and pumped me full of Shadow—"

"No," Two says. "No, I couldn't have."

And Nyx pulls back far enough to smile at her, to reach out and run her fingers through a lock of Two's hair and then tuck it carefully behind Two's ear. "I know," she says. "And that mattered to me more than I ever told you."

Two shuts her eyes. "Or at least I want to think it did," she whispers, "badly enough to make you tell it to me now."

A moment's stillness. And then Nyx murmurs in her ear, "I did love you. I could have, if I'd known. I thought about it." A rush of all the things Two wants most to hear her say, Two thinks distantly, and then—

Then Nyx's grip on her changes, so hard it's almost punishing, and when Two opens her eyes, Nyx's are veined with black.

"Pathetic," the alien says coolly. "You are all so pathetic," and then it lets go of her—and she grabs for it, suddenly certain that this is her way out. This place, this dim quiet place, is changing around them, a rush of air, a sense of movement; and the alien's trying to pull free of Two's grip, but she tightens her hands and doesn't let go. She can't let go, she has to hold on. She can't let it get loose—

 

 

—and she digs her fingers into the strange black mass of it: somehow smooth and clinging at the same time, writhing, viscous surface shuddering. It's still halfway inside of her, and she's gagging, choking, jamming her other hand desperately into her own mouth and dragging the last thrashing clump out of her throat herself.

She hurls it away from her blindly, and she's expecting to suck in a breath but—but nothing happens. She can feel her chest heaving, her lungs straining, but there just _isn't_ anything.

She gropes for whatever's around her, underneath her, because she's touching _something_ , knees pressed to metal. And the moment her fingers find that surface, she starts to understand.

Because there's something on her hands. Something on her hands, a flexible sort of film; it barely has any sensation itself, but it's dulled the press of her fingertips in a way that's familiar.

She's felt this before. Because she's been spaced once already.

She hadn't been aware of it that time, not really. Not until she'd scrabbled back through the airlock, and the shell her nanites had made to protect her had cracked off—but then they're not the same nanites anymore. She got an upgrade, after all.

She cautiously opens her eyes. They're filmed over just like her hands; they must be, given that they aren't boiling in her head right now. But the film is clear enough to see through, though there's a funny fish-eye quality to her vision.

And this time, as it turns out, she's in an airlock already. The alien must have clung on hard to keep from being swept out when the airlock opened. And if they could survive in vacuum on their own without any trouble, Two thinks, they wouldn't have had ships they needed anybody to open the way for.

That's why it started to falter—why it lost its hold on her. And now what's left of it is sprawled across the airlock decking in front of her, still shuddering weakly, half-heartedly reaching out with a dozen spindly pieces of itself as if it wants to claw its way back into her. But it can't: it can't reach far enough, and even as she watches the parts of it that have extended are turning dull, slowing, flaking. All of it is; it's stopped moving, its edges crumbling apart.

Two still can't breathe, but she's reasonably sure that won't kill her, at least not for another few minutes. It isn't like drowning; the nanites won't _let_ her breathe in, won't let her damage herself. So she forces herself to set the sensation of the burn in her lungs aside, at least long enough to smear a boot through what's left of the alien, just to be sure.

Seems pretty dead, she thinks. And if it isn't, she can always open the airlock again.

She grapples her way to the external controls and gives the command for it to close and seal again—and of course she has to turn around to check and make sure it's working, because she can't hear anything. At the very least, though, she can feel the reassuring thunk of the seal settling into place; and then, at last, she catches the faint hiss of atmosphere, the rush of movement as air's pumped in all at once, and the moment the nanites unseal her throat, she gasps it in gratefully.

This time the shell or film or whatever it is doesn't flake off—it just dissolves against her skin. Handy.

She lets herself sit there, leaning against the wall of the airlock beneath the console, just catching her breath.

And then she levers herself up, and thumbs the comm button.

"Bridge? Anybody there?"

There's a pause.

"Two?" Five says, a little cautiously.

"It's me," Two says, except that's hardly proof. She sucks in another long slow breath and steadies herself. What might work? What's good enough? The alien had told her it used the crew's loyalty to her against them—but had it been by pretending to be her, or by letting them know it had her?

She squeezes her eyes shut, and then all at once against the backs of her eyelids there's a flash of something. Vision—memory. The android, and Two had shot her. The alien had shot her.

The android wouldn't have turned her back on an alien.

And if it had been trying to conceal itself, then maybe all she has to do is tell the truth. "One of those things," she says aloud into the comm, "it was—it was inside me. On the shipyard, when they took me away, I was brought to a Ferrous Corp lab. The scientist there, one of them was controlling her. They put another in me."

"Okay," says a familiar voice. Wexler, she realizes, and that should be a surprise—except she almost remembers that, too. "Well, points for honesty, but I hope you'll forgive us for being a little skittish, here."

"I'm in an airlock. Someone—" She pauses. It's less a flash this time and more of a flicker, a quick parade of images. "Ryo," she amends slowly. "Ryo shot me while it was still in me, and then dragged me to the airlock and opened it."

"He spaced you," Five repeats flatly, unhappily.

"I had reason to believe you would survive it," Ryo says, level and unapologetic. "We spoke of leadership—of threats to this crew. I told you that in your position, I would do the same."

"Except I didn't shoot you," Two says.

But she doesn't quite mean it. She isn't sure she believes him, but she also isn't sure it matters: if vacuum hadn't been enough to do the trick, getting her off the ship and away from them would have been the next-best thing.

And if he had meant to kill her, he hadn't succeeded.

"The alien is still here," Two tells them, "but it left me. I think it panicked. It crawled around a little bit and then—fell apart."

"Ew," Five says.

"How did you figure it out?"

"Well, in retrospect, you were acting kind of weird," Five says, a little apologetically. "But you did something to the android. She's still in a self-repair cycle, but she was able to keep herself linked to the ship's systems. She sent me a message. I tried to tell Six, but—"

She chokes herself off abruptly, the sound of her voice wet and unhappy, and—

And that's right. Six. He opened the way, that's what the alien had said; but he's not dead.

"They have him," Two says. "Five, he's not dead. That thing, before it left, it was—it talked to me. They've got Six. I don't know what they're going to do to him, but he's not dead."

"Oh, fantastic!" Wexler says, overflowing with blatantly false enthusiasm. "I was so worried. But that's great, that's—that's just great. So now all I have to freak out about is you idiots wanting to charge _toward_ those things to rescue him, instead of running like hell, which is what anybody with a _brain_ in their head would do—"

"So their ships did get through." Two grits her teeth. She'd been hoping the alien had been lying about that.

"Yeah," Five says. "We jumped to FTL, we—I didn't know what else to do. Three's gone, Portia took him, and the android's still repairing herself, and you were—you—"

"I'm fine," Two tells her gently, and Five's sniff is more than audible across the comm, but it's all too easy for Two to imagine the way she's wiping at her eyes, straightening her shoulders, pulling herself together. "I'll stay in the airlock until you have a chance to run some scans, or come down here and take a look at whatever's left of this thing—whatever you all need to do to agree that it's safe to let me out."

"Great," Wexler says, with a tone that says it's anything but. "Then what?"

"Then we find Portia Lin," Two says, "and we go get Three back; and we get Six out—"

"I fucking knew it," Wexler mutters.

"—no matter what it takes," Two continues calmly, as though he hadn't spoken. "And then we fight."

Silence falls, for a moment. "Two," Five says at last, quiet, "you didn't see them. You didn't see their ships."

"I don't need to," Two tells her. "It doesn't matter. Maybe there are too many of them; maybe they're unstoppable. Maybe they'll crush us. But we have to try. If they want this dimension, they're going to have to take it from us, because we're not going to give it to them. We're not going to let them have it. We _fight_."

Because nothing's ever easy, but you have to try. That's the only way to make any of it mean anything. That's the only way to make it matter, even if it's only to you.

She waits for them to argue—argue, or agree, or tell her she's going to be stuck in here for another six hours while the android's self-repair cycle completes.

But when a response does come, it's not over the comm. It's the sound of the airlock's inner seal disengaging.

"Five, you haven't even checked—"

"It's you," Five says. "It's you and we need you, so you better get up here."

Two smiles at the comm, even though Five can't see it. "Okay," she says, "on my way," and then she pushes the airlock hatch open and steps out.

 

 


End file.
